The Himachal Pradesh police have seized over 15 lakh illegally cultivated poppy vegetation (opium) on 66 bighas in Chauhar valley of Mandi district, officers mentioned.
Four police groups from Padhar got here throughout three hilltops lined with poppy vegetation in full bloom, and destroyed the fields in a 17-hour operation over the past two days, police mentioned.
According to Mandi SP, Shalini Agnihotri, the police division acquired a tip-off about an enormous space lined in poppy fields within the Chauhar valley. After an preliminary recce on Wednesday, 4 separate police groups reached Garh village in Tikken sub-tehsil on Thursday to find a patch of land the place poppy vegetation had been being cultivated illegally.
“On further investigation, the police party was surprised to see three hilltops looking like a carpet of white flowers. A closer look told them that they had actually stumbled across hilltops that had poppy plants in full bloom flowering stage growing on them,” she mentioned.
Amid heavy rain and hailstorms, the groups climbed on and reached the primary hilltop after a three-hour trek, the SP mentioned. Then they descended and scaled the subsequent two hills and located {that a} whole of over 66 bighas of presidency and personal land had been underneath poppy vegetation. “During the raid, around 15 lakh opium plants were found and some samples seized from the spot. The remaining plants have been destroyed,” mentioned Agnihotri.
She mentioned that round 5 to 6 kilograms of opium is produced on one bigha land and the narcotic is then bought at round Rs 3 lakh per kilogram available in the market. “Accordingly, around 330 kilos of opium could have been produced from this area with a market price of around Rs 10 crore,” mentioned the police officer.
The police have registered 4 instances underneath part 18 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act on the Padhar police station, and additional probe into the case is underway.
